There are an increasingly large number of devices that have network connectivity. Over the years, network connectivity has been extended to appliances such as refrigerators, home entertainment centers, and interactive box sets for use with television sets, digital cameras, and cell phones. With the evolution of these devices, there has been developments in home networks. For example, WIFI technology enables users to interconnect various network enabled devices wirelessly to form their own local area network. Various services and applications currently exist with the goal of establishing data connectivity between different network locations. The growth of the Internet and other types of networks has contributed to the numerous networking applications that currently exist.
There is also an interest in extending network connectivity to devices that can roam. These devices include cell phones, personal digital assistants (PDAs), and stations that can be assembled on vehicles or airplanes. While wireless networks for such roaming devices exist, these networks tend to have limited bandwidth, and can be expensive. In addition, it is difficult for operators of such devices to interact with networks, given that these devices often have poor user-interface features, and limited processing/memory resources for tasks that are often desired from them.
Currently, there are various interoperability issues when different types of network enabled devices are coupled. Often, the different devices operate on incompatible platforms or operating systems. This can cause problems in how these devices share data with one another. Furthermore, connected devices may use different data types (.WAV versus MPEG) and/or data formats that hinder the user's ability to share data amongst devices. As an example, the size of the screen display on a cell phone is typically too small to render images from a digital camera, even if the cell phone is camera-enabled. Often, the result is that when users want to share data amongst connected devices, that user must perform numerous manual steps, such as manually converting data formats.
Digital photography in particular has become more popular because the number of devices that provide image capturing functionality has increased dramatically. As digital photographs have become more commonplace, the desire of users to share such photographs has also dramatically increased. Now, users can almost instantly share digital images by sending them as attachments to emails or as Multimedia Message Service (MMS) images. However, digital images occupy considerable memory, so not all devices can handle images readily, at least with high resolution. Furthermore, the transmission of large image files is burdensome. Lastly, printing digital images remains costly. Many services exist for which users can transmit digital images (through email) for high-quality printing. These services allow the picture taker to invite others to see and order prints by first storing and making the digital images available on an intermediate server. Invitees can peruse the picture taker's folder and order their own pictures through the same print service.